Chocolate Chip Muffins and Rose Colored Glasses
by allygrace
Summary: Takes place the night after Time After Time. What was going through their heads?GeorgeIzzieCallie 3 parts.
1. Callie

** Chocolate Chip Muffins, Rose Colored Glasses and the Man Who Loved Them **

Callie was so tired and yet she couldn't sleep. As she lay there she began to think about the person she was and the person that she was now becoming. She used to be strong, she used to be able to stand up for herself and command attention. That changed now. She let him lie. Lie right to her face and she let it go. She said she had a long day and was tired and let him off the hook while she lay awake wondering who in fact she really married.

Callie wanted to believe so badly that George was good that he was so unlike the other men she had dated so unlike the Mark Sloanes of the world. He was George; he was funny and compassionate and he loved her. She could see it on his face. However, lately there was something else on his face too; it was a far away look, almost like when he was talking to her, he was thinking of somebody else. She tried to brush it off as nothing, but for some reason she couldn't. Callie wanted so desperately to go through life wearing rose colored glasses. She wanted to see the happy things in life, and nothing else. She was able to do this for a while, and then the sun would get in her eyes. The sun would sting and burn until she couldn't take it anymore. Then she would find herself again, later, sitting in the dark wondering when this roller coaster ride would stop.

Callie wanted to go back to Vegas. When they got married it felt so right to her. She was going to be Mrs. Callie O'Malley for the rest of her life and nothing could make her happier. With George by her side she knew she could make it through anything. 8 days later they flew back to Seattle. At Seattle Grace, it is easy to become distracted, Callie with work and George? He got distracted by Izzie.

Izzie Stevens is a bitch and there really isn't any way else to put it. Izzie is needy and selfish and took pride in putting Callie down and regarding her marriage as a bad joke that meant absolutely nothing. It wasn't fair. All she wanted was a lousy coffee with her husband but she could never find him because he was always off with Izzie! She knew friendship was important, but please. It wasn't her fault that Izzie killed her own husband to be, but now Callie had to suffer because Izzie spent all her time with George? Who by the way has a WIFE!

She was sick and tired of all this crap. It was time to say something. Tomorrow she would find Izzie and tell her that she can't compete with her and didn't want to. George was her husband his "actual" family and she just needed to accept that.

Callie drifted off to sleep thinking of what tomorrow would bring and hoping and praying that her talk with Izzie would be enough to save her marriage, while in her heart knowing that there were bigger problems to come.


	2. Izzie

When Izzie couldn't sleep she would bake. It was something about being in a kitchen with a bunch of ingredients in front of her and the soothing smell of something cooking in the oven that took her mind off her problems.

Unfortunately, tonight baking was not an option. Tonight, she was lying awake counting the lines on her ceiling, feeling the ache in her back and thinking of George.

. Izzie did not know how the hell she would have gotten through the day if George hadn't come running through that door. Better yet, she didn't know how the hell she would have gotten through the last year if George hadn't come into her life period.

It was amazing how in one year so many things can happen. How people can change. Who knew, that in one year someone could achieve their dreams, fall in love, loose it all and then crawl back to the surface and start over again. It sounds impossible, but it wasn't. This was her life.

If Izzie learned one thing this year, it was that if you love somebody you hold on to them. When Denny died, it literally felt like everything good was sucked from the world. There wasn't happiness, nor light just death and darkness. The darkness engulfs you, and pulls you under, and you're suffocating, dying inside. Then you become so preoccupied with the darkness, that you forget why you're alive in the first place.

Then there was George, her best friend in the world, her person and the only one who always understood .He was the sunshine that lit up her life. George was the one that held her hand, helped her cry, and made her laugh. But most importantly, he was just there.

Then his Dad died, and instead of grieving like a normal person, he married Callie instead. It's not like Izzie didn't like Callie. Well okay she didn't like Callie, but it was more like she didn't like George and Callie together. It was hard to explain why at the time, their whole relationship just felt rushed and weird, how well did he know her anyway?

When you have a shotgun wedding in Vegas a couple weeks after your father dies, chances are you might have some intimacy issues. Not to mention you're probably not thinking clearly. Besides, Callie was a rebound girl, you don't marry the rebound.

Then of course they had a fight, so George came over to vent .Then the sex happened. The sex that was crazy, ridiculous would never happen in a million years sex, actually happened. Once it did, the idea didn't seem that crazy anymore, it felt right.

Nevertheless, George was married, and adultery was wrong. It was best to back off and try to forget. It's what he wanted anyway. It was better to just feel sorry and pretend it never happened.

But Izzie didn't feel sorry, not for the action anyway, only the circumstances. But the sex didn't matter anyway, because she didn't love George because of the sex, she loved him because he was George and just having him in her life was enough.

As hard as things were, she knew they would make it through because they had each other, and if you hold on to the people you love through tough times you can overcome anything. Besides, George's friendship was one thing worth fighting to hold on to.


	3. George

George had been faking sleep for about 3 hours now. He knew that Callie was listening, waiting for him to roll over or open his eyes but that wasn't going to happen tonight.

George self admittedly, was not the best person when it came to coping with things. He was a good listener, and he was good at helping other people, in fact that was one of the main reasons he decided to become a surgeon. But as always with a true doctor at heart, when it came to himself, he couldn't deal and didn't want to hear anyone's comforting words.

Callie had wanted to have a conversation for sometime now, he could tell. It was that look she got on her face, the "I really want to yell at you but I am holding it in" look. That look was really annoying.

However, he knew in his heart that he definitely deserved any little comment she threw his way. He cheated on his wife and he knew that underneath it all she knew too.

It was hard to sleep next to someone who you know you have hurt, yet you're too chicken shit to confront the problem. Normally when he and Callie had a fight he _would_ just crash with Izzie. But it was hard to sleep next to someone who you know you have hurt, so that was not an option.

That night was burned into his brain forever. He remembered the fighting and then Callie yelling and telling him that Izzie had feelings for him. That was crazy. He had officially believed that Callie had lost her mind and let her insecurities eat her up it up inside. Well apparently Callie didn't like the fact that he thought she was crazy so she kicked him out and the next thing he knew he was knocking back shots with Izzie.

The thing he liked best about Izzie was not what everyone else noticed, it was the little things. He knew that when most people looked at her they saw her body and face and the fact that she looked like supermodel, but that's not what he saw. When he looked at Izzie he saw how her face scrunched up when she laughed and how her eyes welled up when she cried and how he could tell what she was thinking without her saying a word. George guessed that those were the type of things you learn to see when your there for someone.

It had become physically exhausting to live his life. It was a strange feeling to not know the person that wore your clothes and thought your thoughts. But he wasn't the Georgie O'Malley he used to be and he wasn't sure how he felt about it.

He was forever the good son and the supportive friend. George was the sweet, but insecure guy that never once got the girl and was always that lame guy with the puppy-dog crush instead. Then he met Callie and she wanted _him _and she chased _him. _He never thought a girl like Callie, gorgeous confident and strong would ever give him a second glace, but she did. Then they got married in Vegas on a whim and he thought it was a good idea, or well he didn't think it was a bad idea and he just went with it. Besides, George supposed he was the marrying type, he was never much for dating and he loved children, especially babies. He thought he would be one of those men that loved being married and some days he did, but marriage was a lot of work and it was definitely tougher then it looked

Callie was all he could ever ask for in a wife, loving supportive and drop dead gorgeous and she was in love with him. But a lot of times sitting awake in nights like this he wondered if she really did love him, or did she love the idea of who he could be, his potential. A lot of times when he was with her he felt like he was like a 6 year old in church being told not to fidget and to stand up straight.

With Izzie it was different. She might be a supermodel on the outside but she was just as big a dork as he was on the inside. He remembered that time when they couldn't sleep so they decided to make chocolate chip muffins at 3 in the morning. It was dark and they were stumbling but they managed, laughing there asses off the whole time, trying not to wake Meredith and Derek up. They dropped half the batter on the ground but the muffins they managed to salvage were the best tasting he had ever had in his life.

That was one thing he loved about Izzie. He was never too weird or dorky or annoying, and if he wanted to do something silly she was along for the ride. That was just the kind of person she was.

They were there for each other the only way that best friends could be. Like today with her operation, he had his mind set to avoid her, but once he found out what was going on he was there in a second, because she needed him and that's where he knew he needed to be. It was like a silent war in his head part of him telling him to go, to not deal and to go back to safe territory and the other part told him that he needed to stay because it was Izzie and seeing her hurt made him hurt inside.

. He saw her daughter today, and even through the chemo and pain in her he saw Izzie; and all he could think about was how that girl was going to break so many men's hearts just like her mommy was breaking his in shards at that very second, every second since that drunken night.

But it didn't matter, because he was married and she could probably do better anyway. He was committed to this marriage, by principal even if his heart wasn't all the way in it. This was the way it had to be, because he was George, and his life was never easy.

So George there thinking, drifting off to sleep, thinking of Callie, how she was funny smart and supportive all things he could ever want. But no matter how hard he tried, he was unable to escape that intoxicating smell of chocolate chip muffins wafting through the air.

_Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick,  
and think of you  
caught up in circles confusion--  
is nothing new  
Flashback--warm nights--  
almost left behind  
suitcases of memories,  
time after time-Cyndi Lauper -"Time After Time" _


End file.
